in a moment's notice
by mistykasumi
Summary: Helen, a modern rendition.


**in a moment's notice**

for jinxed_wood, Yuletide 2007

I followed canon pretty loosely, so I hope I kept true to the spirit of the story!

* * *

Helen debuts when she is sixteen.

Just a month before, Helen comes home to find Clytemnestra curled up in her bed, shaking, and Clytemnestra tries to push her away when Helen goes to wrap her arms around her sister. Helen doesn't let that stop her, and soon, Clytemnestra is sobbing into her blouse.

When she's calmer, Clytemnestra says, "I overheard the servants say that you will be the most beautiful woman of the century. They said that they pity me and Penelope, who'll never measure up to you, and we'll only attract men who want to use us to get to you."

Helen laughs and tightens her arms around Clytemnestra. "The century has barely started! What do they know?" Clytemnestra doesn't respond, and Helen says, "Don't worry, Clytemnestra. I promise that I won't marry until you do."

Clytemnestra looks up at her, eyes wide. "Do you really promise?"

Helen laughs and holds out a pinkie. "Of course! We'll pinkie swear on it."

Clytemnestra slaps at her arm, but she links her pinkie with Helen's, smiling.

* * *

When Helen debuts, all eyes are on her. She notices the boys in the crowd looking after her as her brothers escort her away, but she does not forget her promise. She's only sixteen. She still has time, and from the looks of it, she may end up taking a while, anyway.

Clytemnestra debuts two years later, with their cousin Penelope. Helen is in the crowd, and she claps extra hard when her sister is presented. Clytemnestra is radiant, and she's recently started seeing Tantalus, who is a decent guy as far as Helen can tell. Helen is happy for her.

Menelaus comes to her when the dancing commences, and she accepts his request for a dance. She met many boys at her own debut, but he is the only one whose name she remembered that night. They haven't exactly been...anything, but neither has there been nothing. She's dropped her hints, and he's dropped his.

"Your brother seems interested in my sister," Helen says, watching Agamemnon ask for a dance with Clytemnestra.

Menelaus turns his head to look, and Helen places her hand in his. When he turns back, he says, "It appears so." Helen can hear nothing underneath his words, but then he closes his hand around hers and smiles, and she smiles back, lets him lead her away.

* * *

In another two years, Clytemnestra is talking about marriage to Tantalus. Helen likes Tantalus, thinks he is good for her sister, and she looks forward to the wedding.

Then, she can have her own. She and Menelaus are...something now, not quite official but more than they had been, but Helen has not forgotten her promise. She has waited this long; a little bit longer won't mean anything. Helen feels free for the first time since her debut, free and excited for the rest of her life.

That summer, Agamemnon interns at their father's company, and the brothers end up spending a fair amount of time at their house. Helen doesn't mind, of course; any time with Menelaus is good time, since they go to different universities.

She's not too sure about Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, though. Tantalus is often with Clytemnestra, and Helen can feel the tension between the three of them. The one time Tantalus and Agamemnon are around when Clytemnestra is not, Helen sees the two of them exit the kitchen and onto the veranda. She watches them shout at each other through the kitchen window and eventually turns away. Helen does not have the stomach for this.

Tantalus breaks Clytemnestra's heart a week later, and Helen is furious. She holds her sister while she cries, and she thinks, _my sister is worth whatever you did not want to lose._

In a matter of months, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon are an item, and Helen is uneasy. But she thinks that Agamemnon is a decent guy overall, and it's not like she knows with any certainty that Agamemnon had influenced Tantalus. And if he's been waiting for Clytemnestra for years, well, he must have good intentions.

When Agamemnon and Clytemnestra wed, Helen does not raise any objections. She goes up to Menelaus at the reception and says, softly, "I choose you." Menelaus smiles, raises her hand and kisses it, and Helen is certain she's made the right choice.

* * *

Helen meets Paris when she is thirty-one. He is nearly ten years younger than she is.

At the annual Christmas party, Helen hears gossip about the newcomers. They are old blood from the Old World, and two of the sons recently came over to manage this branch of the family company. Someone points them out, but Helen can't see much except for two backs, both well-defined and sharp, one topped with brown and the other with gold.

Menelaus comes during a lull in the activities and tells her that he wants her to meet his two newest business associates. She acquiesces, and she doesn't expect to be led to the two newcomers. The one with brown hair is Hector. The other one is Paris.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Paris says, voice low, and it crawls inside Helen and makes her feel like she is all of sixteen again, just preparing to debut.

"And the same to you," Helen says.

* * *

At the next few social events of the season, Helen learns more about the two brothers. She hears that Paris had disappeared en route to boarding school and that the family was certain they would never see him again when no ransom demands came and no one responded to their reward for information. He had appeared ten years later at their door, a grown man, and the whole family had wept with joy.

No one knows what had happened during those years, and the family did not want to press.

Paris has a way of finding her at every party. "Helen," he says, and Helen can hear the honey lying underneath the word. It never fails to make her tremble a little inside, even though she is a woman of more than thirty.

He intrigues her, with his bronze skin and golden curls, his Old World eyes and his silk-smooth face. Helen finds herself looking forward to glimpses of him at the next gathering, and she doesn't know where her mind has gone because she is undoubtedly happy where she is.

She gets a little tipsy at the winter masquerade, and by the time she is aware of herself again, Paris has her pressed against a closed door upstairs, mouth fervent against hers. _Just this once_, Helen tells herself, and she rushes up to meet him.

_This'll be the last time_, Helen tells herself the next time. And the third. And every time after that, until she stops telling herself anything at all.

* * *

Menelaus has always been away on business more than Helen has liked, but now Helen uses these opportunities to invite Paris to the house. He makes her feel like she is young again, still caught in the heady thrills of courtship. Helen has been aware of that title her sister had heard so long ago, "most beautiful woman of the century", following her around, but only now can she truly believe it.

It's not that she no longer loves Menelaus. In fact, it's far from it. It's just that Paris is young, he is beautiful, and he _wants_ her. That is more than she has seen in too long, and Helen relishes feeling like she is sixteen again, with the eyes of all the boys on her.

Paris asks her, during the third trip Menelaus takes that month, if she wants to go with him. Helen looks over, still coming down from the high she had hit just minutes before, and Paris is looking at her, head in hand, arm propped against the pillow, eyes soft-lidded and gaze a caress.

Helen thinks about Menelaus, frequently away on his long trips, thinks about the potential girls he has waiting for him in all those places, the potential girl he may even be with now, and she says, "Yes." It's not like Menelaus will care if she goes off for six months, and Hermione is old enough to take care of herself.

* * *

The Old World is splendid. Paris's parents are kind, and Helen feels guilty because this is just a little bit of fun, nothing more. She lives with them in smiles and silently counts down the days until she is ready to go home.

Then, she hears of the litigation against Paris's company. Agamemnon and Menelaus are behind it.

Helen does not know what to think. It would be too much to think that the litigation is because of her, but the timing is also too coincidental. She asks Paris about it, and he assures her that she does not have to worry, that Hector and Deiphobus will take care of it.

When she sees that Achilles is the leader of the team her husband and brother-in-law hire, Helen regrets. Paris's parents are kind, and she has come to like Hector and his wife in the short amount of time she knew them, before she came here with Paris. She only wanted to have a little bit of fun. She did not wish any harm upon anyone, and yet it had happened anyway.

When Paris leaves to help his brothers with the lawsuit, Helen books herself a flight. She almost chooses a flight home before she realizes that she doesn't want to mess things up even more, so she takes a flight to Egypt instead.

* * *

Helen doesn't try to keep up with the situation closely, but it's still a big enough event that she'll hear or see mention of it every once in a while. She hears about the whole extortion business between Achilles, Hector, and Patroclus, and both Achilles and Hector resign from the litigation because of it. Odysseus is hired to replace Achilles, and Helen remembers meeting him when she was sixteen, meeting him again when he was marrying Penelope. They are a match for each other, and he is more than a match for Paris.

She also reads about the wrongful death claim her sister brings against her brother-in-law regarding their daughter, and Helen thinks, _maybe I should have spoken up at their wedding back then_. Maybe she should have, but she didn't, and now it's just another thing to add to her growing list.

Helen books a flight back home for the last day of the lawsuit. She waits outside because she is not allowed in, and she is not surprised to learn that her husband wins.

Helen approaches him when the cameras are gone, swarming Paris instead. "Menelaus," she says, and he looks up at her in surprise.

"Helen," and she can hear nothing underneath her name.

"I still choose you," Helen says, because she does not know what else to say.

Menelaus's face contorts. "Helen, I—" She doesn't let him finish.

"I'm sorry," she tells him, and she takes his hand and places something in it. When she curls his fingers loosely over it, Menelaus fixes his eyes on her wedding ring. "I've never taken it off," Helen says. She does not say, _I've always been yours._ Menelaus looks at her, a gaze for a gaze, and it feels like an eternity before he opens his fist and looks down.

Sitting in his palm is a golden swan, wings open, neck curved, bill made of carnelian and knob above made of onyx. It's a delicate, dainty thing, almost too fine to touch, and Helen says, "My mother gave it to me, and her mother before her, and her mother's mother before that." She still remembers her mother giving it to her, telling her to keep it until it's time to pass it on. Helen had always intended to give it to Hermione, but she is certain, in this moment, that Menelaus is meant to have it.

Menelaus closes his fingers gently over it, and he says, finally, "Let's go home."

07.12.19


End file.
